Twilight Crusade: Origins
by GreysonSkye
Summary: A collection of backstories from the characters that would eventually go on to form Twilight Crusade. While this is primarily for people who follow me and my works, these are also decent places to start, if you don't mind some character-related spoilers.
1. The Last of the Inyan, Part 1

**Note: Updates will not be regular in the slightest. When a mini-series starts, it'll be posted daily, but as for the time in between series... ¯\\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯**

**The Last of the Inyan, Part One**

My name is Alexandra Ité.

Well, maybe I should say my name _was_ Alexandra Ité, as by the time anyone reads this letter, they'll have found it in the pocket of a dried-out skeleton, picked clean by the vultures I see circling me now, waiting with impossible patience for my last breath.

I'm writing this so some memory persists after I'm gone. So someone, whenever and however this note reaches them, knows I existed.

My name was Alexandra Ité. I've wandered this land for a decade now. Though the exact days escape me, I believe I was nineteen years old, born in late June. Skin darker than the stone I tread, with purple hair and one matching eye, the other green. I am the last surviving member of the Inyan Tribe.

I should begin my story by describing the day my life began as it is now. It was one of the Inyan Tribe's market days, when we would arrive in the morning at a settlement, and sell the garments, scrap fabric, and rare stones we found and crafted over the course of the week. Our goods became coveted among the people of rural Vacuo, as I learned our kingdom was named. Though it could never be predicted where our tribe would arrive, business was always good. We'd use most of what we earned that night in the same village- buying enough food and water to last our tribe until the next visit.

It was a simple life, but one I miss.

One morning, we arrived at one of Vacuo's permanent settlements, though I forget the name now. I marvelled at the streets of stone and buildings crafted from hard wood, though my mother's worry prevented me from much exploration. I stayed in the tent my mother and father, the village chief and his wife, set up. Shining quartz and amethyst displayed in front of us. Many passed up the stones this day in favor of our cloth, I remember. The warmest days of Summer were coming to an end, after all.

The air seemed to chill as one hooded figure stepped up to the tent. She was shrouded in robes of black, a finer silk than any I had ever seen. A hood was lowered over her eyes, allowing us only to see her ghostly pale neck and chin, and blood-red lips.

"What magnificent stones!" she marvelled.

My father thanked her.

"Though, I've heard mention of another the Inyan possess. It's said to bring out and amplify the power of dust." The woman's lips drew into a grin. "You know about this, surely?"

My father's eyes narrowed. "How do you?" he questioned.

The woman's grin widened. "So it's true," she pressed.

"Crown Jewel is not for sale, nor will it ever be," my father defended. He stood up, yet his imposing height and broad shoulders did little to dissuade the mysterious visitor. "I insist you leave at once."

To my surprise, the woman left without a word.

"Father, who was that?" I asked in a hushed voice.

"I do not know," he admitted. "And how she knows of the Inyan Crown Jewel is beyond me as well."

The rest of the day passed as every market day did. By sundown, the cloaked woman had left my mind almost entirely. I sat inside the largest tent in the village, the one shared by my mother, father, and I. I read by candlelight. Most in the village learned only enough in the way of literacy and numbers to make sales, but being the village chief's daughter, I had access to my parents' old books, as well as a few my mother had picked out for me on particularly good market days.

The peace was shattered by an earsplitting scream. My mother dropped the shawl she had been knitting, and her eyes widened. My father stood upright, his head on a swivel.

The scream was cut off by a deafening explosion. An orange glow flashed across our tent, and a burst of wind threatened to topple it. Abject horror seized me, taking hold of my body from heart to the tips of my fingers and toes. Somehow I knew what, no. _Who_ I would see as I peeked an eye out of a flap in our tent.

Crimson lips, drawn into a grin. Ghostly pale skin. Hair darker than night and frigid blue eyes. It was the woman from the market, still robed in black. She held a man by the throat, bringing her face near his.

"You. Do you know where the Crown Jewel is?"

"I-I'll never- tell you!" my tribemate struggled, gasping for breath between words.

The woman's icy blue eyes narrowed, and I nearly became sick as flames spouted from the hand grasping his throat.

Half a dozen or more of my tribemates had surrounded the cloaked figure. Without a word to signal their arrival, they guided their arms through a series of movements equal in grace and aggression. Spines of stone bore down on the cloaked figure from each direction, a ring of spears threatening her demise. She raised a single hand.

"_Tempus diapsalma._"

In an instant, a flash of ice dust blasted outward and imploded back into the figure with a peculiar sound. An ethereal layer covered the campsite, halting both tribemates and stone in place. The ice coated the outer wall of my tent, and in the dead silence, I felt as if time stood still.

With the wicked grin still upon her lips, the woman formed spears of ice and plumes of flame around the members of my tribe.

My mother pulled me from where I watched the scene unfold.

"Chief Ité! Another young man shouted, bursting into the tent. "A woman is attacking our tribe! She's killed Beryl and Jaiden!"

"Ancestors protect us," my father prayed, bowing his head. He winced as another cacophony of agonized screams filled the air. "I will confront her." He stepped to the middle of the room, rolling back the knit rug to reveal the dirt beneath. He raised his hands in front of himself, shifting the stone in front of me to form a hole, several feet deep, and about six feet long.

It looked like a grave.

Without a word, my father walked to the foot of his bed, and clicked the hinge on a black box. From it, he produced a tiara crafted of dark, twisted stone. On it, a single purple gem that gleamed in the candlelight, two inches long and one wide, cut in perfect symmetry. He knelt in front of me.

"Alexandra. Take Crown Jewel, and hide in there," he directed, pointing to the hole in the middle of the floor. "Once we dispel our attacker, I will retrieve you. If I don't, know we watch over you, always. Know we love you."

Tears welled in my eyes, anguish clasping my throat like a clawed hand. "B-But father... I can't... you can't go!"

"I must. If I don't retrieve you, raise your hands above your head, and will the stone to move. It will for you, my daughter."

My trembling legs forbid me move.

"Promise me, you will keep Crown Jewel safe," my father continued. He hoisted me up by the shoulders, carrying my limp form to the hole in the floor. "No matter what becomes of us, you _must_ promise me."

"I... I promise."

The hole wasn't deep enough.

I can still recall the agonizing sound of my parents' screams, of my mother's body landing on the ground above me.

I stayed in that hole until I could no longer bear my prison. Part of me feared the woman remained, and another part lied, insisting my father would come to retrieve me.

By the time I emerged, the Sun had begun to rise.

I tried my best to avert my eyes, to avoid the slain forms of my tribe. There were too many of them. Everywhere I turned, the seared, twisted faces of friends. The faces of family, frozen solid with their last tortured scream permanently etched into them.

I had to leave. I filled a stone canteen to the brim, fixing it to my waist. In a bag, all the food I could carry.

Then, I set off. My feet carried me forward, my mind in a daze. I had no idea where I was going, nor where I would arrive. I'm not even sure I cared. In a single night, I had lost everything, and every_one_ I had ever known. My father told me to protect Crown Jewel. As far as I knew, that was all I lived for.

And yet, I had no idea _how_ Crown Jewel worked. I had moved the stone aside, but my father already taught me basic dust wielding. Crown Jewel is supposed to draw out its user's inner strength, synergize the user's soul with the dust they wield. I felt no connection to it, none of the innate strength my father promised me when teaching me its significance.

An endless sea of orange and brown surrounded me now, pitfalls at the edge of the plateau I traversed tumbling hundreds of feet down. It was silent, and oppressively lonely. I walked on for hours. The Sun above beat down on me, the searing heat I thought I had grown used to burning my skin. I stopped to sit, and opened my jug of water.

Once done with my sip, I looked to the sky. Around the sun, a ring of winged black silhouettes. I blinked, cocking my head in sudden curiosity. One of the birds was bigger than the others. _Impossibly_ big.

My eyes widened, heart sinking as the largest bird suddenly pulled off from the ring. It beat its wings viciously as it began to descend upon me with a hellish scream. I ran as fast as I could, even faster than I thought possible. Yet I heard the Nevermore's shrieks closing in. I chanced a glimpse over my shoulder.

Its massive wings spread wide, the Nevermore pulled back, talons lunging forward to seize me like a falcon would a mouse. I dove to the ground, and felt air rip past my back. Stone shredded upward just feet in front of me where the claws tore through the ground, a plume of dust rising into the sunlight. With a frustrated scream, the Nevermore once again took to the sky.

My arms and legs trembled violently, losing all semblance of strength. My heart pounded into my ears, and I began running once again, gasping for breath through the cloud of dust, sweating profusely in the heat. I heard the beast circle back around.

In my horror, I didn't realize how close I had come to the edge of the plateau. As I looked over my shoulder, one faulty step sent me tumbling over the crest of the stone wall. My ribs struck first on a jagged outcropping, and I screamed as I tumbled over it, dropping ten, fifteen feet to a steep decline. The soles of my shoes and the skin of my hands shredded as I desperately scrambled in an attempt to slow myself to a stop. I succeeded half a dozen feet from a staggering dropoff, one I felt sick merely looking at.

My side felt light.

I looked down, and saw only the lip of my jug remained tied to my side. Its jagged and shattered remains scattered around my legs, water dribbling down the stone and evaporating before it got the chance to tumble over the cliff.

"No... No no no!" I lamented, lurching forward tp my hands and knees in a vain attempt to scavenge the pieces of my only chance at survival.

Another shriek, this one from directly above. I looked up, and saw a colossal beak opening far wider than my body, its crushing blackness blotting out the sun.

I ducked my head to the ground, curling into a ball.

Then, it struck me. Something stirred suddenly within me; a surge of energy like a jolt of lightning or a flickering of flame. All at once, energy coursed through my veins, to every muscle- every cell in my body. The Nevermore's scream cut off, echoing across the canyon wall and into the desert.

I dared raise my head.

A spear of stone, three feet wide at the base and dozens tall, rose from the dirt just behind me. It impaled the creature of grimm through the throat, into its body and leaving the base of its spine. The monster's wings fell to each side of me, slumping to the ground about a dozen feet in both directions.

It began to disappear.

Back then, I thought Crown Jewel had saved my life. Now I know that was my own strength. My soul, synergizing with all those who came before me.


	2. The Last of the Inyan, Part 2

Over time, I got used to my isolation. I don't mean to say I grew to like it, nor do I mean I never felt it. But after some time, I forgot what it meant to have family, friends.

I ended up with a decent system. Through wielding dust, I could make a shelter from stone wherever I pleased. A campfire needed only desert scrub and a snap of my fingers. Luckily, my father taught me navigation through the stars. I've grown to recognize certain landmarks near consistent sources of food and water, and several of Vacuo's more permanent settlements.

I've also crafted a flute from the desert stone, to keep me occupied. I at first sung the songs my mother taught me, but my voice did the melodies no justice. Even so, I could get no more than a handful of notes in before tears began to fall.

As I never learned much more than rudimentary weaving, and the search for gems and stones of value was purely up to chance, I resorted to selling cheap stone crafted into people, animals, whatever I found would sell. They were nowhere near as valuable as the Inyan's cloth and gems, but I was alone, so I didn't need as much money anyway. I would use my money earned for food and water, taking time to bathe whenever and wherever I could. Sometimes, on the luckiest of nights, I could find a cheap inn or a nice family to take me for the night.

It was one of these nights I learned a part of who I am. A part I fear I'll never learn to accept.

I think I was fifteen. I had been travelling most of the day. Summer had long since passed, and so even at the Sun's most intense I was still comfortable travelling, so long as I had enough water. I walked along the edge of a plateau, as I often do when searching for a settlement, river, or even a rare patch of greenery.

The Sun had set, and the countless specks of light painting the darkness began to stretch out above me, Remnant's shattered Moon among them. I held my hands behind me, palms to the ground, and summoned a flat seat of stone. I plopped backward onto it, unscrewing the cap of my remade stone jug.

I drank to the last drop.

I pulled back from my sip, and held my hand out under the lip of my jug.

Nothing.

My heart sunk, and I looked around in desperation. The desert was black. Yet amid this darkness, a single cluster of lights below the horizon.

The walk took about half an hour, during which the skies had turned from dusk to total darkness. As I approached, I saw the lights to be from a farmhouse, one on the front porch and two on the back deck, which overlooked a small field with a shed at the far corner. Two windows facing me gave a warm glow through their curtains.

I considered whether I should knock. After all, it was past dark, and with all the criminals and conmen running round, Vacuo isn't exactly known for its hospitality. But I figured I, a fifteen year old girl, wasn't all too threatening. All I wanted was a refill of water, and if the criminals and conmen were the ones _inside_ the house, I've definitely defended myself against worse.

I heard shuffling inside the house. A shadow passed in front of the peephole, and I heard a voice.

"Cerys, were you expecting a friend?"

A second voice whose words I couldn't make out.

Eventually, I heard the doorknob. The door pulled back a bit, and a grey-haired woman's face peeked around it.

I smiled. "Hi! I'm... well, I'm a nomad. I live in the desert, and I was just wondering if I could stop in to refill my water?"

The old woman's eyes narrowed. I began to strategize my route to the hose I saw coiled up in back of the house.

From behind her, another woman. She was much younger, perhaps only a year or two older than myself. Curly fuschia hair tumbled past her shoulders, and was matched by a basic tee shirt. Her baggy, tough overalls were light blue, tinged tan by years of farmwork. My heart fluttered when we made eye contact.

"Let her in, gran! She won't hurt us, I'm sure of it!" Cerys pleaded. She stepped over to me, arms outstretched as if seeking an embrace. "Come on in. I'll feed you too. Do you need your clothes washed?"

"How long do you plan to keep her?" Cerys's grandmother questioned, as if I was some mangy dog that had wandered into their living room.

"Gran, this girl lives out in the desert, alone! She deserves a bit of hospitality from time to time!" Cerys protested. She started with sudden realization. "We have that spare bed we never use!"

"Fine. She's your responsibility," the old woman concluded with a dismissive wave of her hand.

I was caught off guard by the girl's kindness, my eyes widening and words having trouble escaping my lips. "Oh... thank you, but if it's too much trouble, I can really just get water and go," I finally offered. "Maybe, well, there is that shed in the back..."

Cerys shook her head, and bounded over to me. "I won't have you sleep with the pigs!" she protested. She smiled brightly, pushing up her rosy, freckled cheeks. "Come on, I'll show you around!"

She took my hand in hers, and guided me around her modest home. She then allowed me to shower, taking my dress and cloak to be washed. The machine rumbled in the background as I ate the meal she prepared for me, a steak of ham, with a side of canned beans and fruit. It was the heartiest meal I could remember eating, perhaps in my entire life. The clothes she gave me to wear while mine washed were rough and scratchy, a few sizes too big. But I didn't mind.

As I ate, we talked. My heart swelled when she spoke, and I found myself seeking her smile, telling jokes and giving compliments and gratitude when I could. She was beautiful, I thought. We talked long after I finished my meal, taking a break only when she moved my dress and cloak to the white box apparently used for drying clothes.

"Want to go somewhere a bit more comfortable?" She asked as she cleaned my plate in the kitchen sink.

"Sure! Is it fine if I sit there?" I asked, pointing to the couch.

"I was thinking we could go to my room," she quietly replied. "It's getting late, after all."

She guided me to her room, and pushed four pillows upright where her bed met the wall. She sat with her back against them, and beckoned me to sit next to her. We began to talk again. Half an hour or so passed, and her arm was around me. Another, and my head rested on her chest. Her hand, so warm and soft, gently took mine.

The warmth from her hand seemed to radiate throughout my body. I felt so incredibly at peace, relieved to be sharing this moment with such a beautiful girl after being alone for so long. A strange feeling arose in my chest as she wrapped her other arm around me, and kissed my forehead.

"Hey, can I admit something?" Cerys finally asked.

"Oh... yeah, what is it?" I nervously answered.

"I want you to stay," she finally admitted. "I know gran won't allow it, but I want you to stay here. The desert is dangerous, and I... I think you're really cute."

"You think I'm cute?" I asked, the strange feeling spreading to my limbs and rising into my throat. It was warm, a kind of tension? I don't remember. I haven't felt it since.

Cerys nodded.

"You're beautiful," I finally admitted. The area was nice enough, I thought. Maybe I couldn't stay in the farmhouse, but I could settle into a smaller territory, a handful of miles in each direction, visiting her whenever I could.

Cerys lifted my chin, and kissed me.

I won't go into detail about what we did. I was too young to be doing it, and writing it out would just make the pain of what happened that much worse. I remember the seconds of panic as we heard the doorknob twist, the rush to cover ourselves as Cerys's "gran" burst into the room, shouting profanities and wielding a fireplace poker.

"GODS, DAMN IT ALL!" She screamed. "I _KNEW_ I shouldn't have let some _VAGRANT_ into my home!"

"Gran, wait!" Cerys protested.

"NOT A WORD!" The grey-haired woman snapped. "This... lesbian freak of nature seduced you!" her head snapped to me. "GET OUT OF MY HOME!"

Tears welling in my eyes, the tumult of confusion ripping through my mind like a maelstrom, I turned to face Cerys.

"Alexandra... You should leave."

I broke down, face coated in my tears.

"Good girl!" the old woman continued. She lunged forward, grabbing a fistful of my hair and wrenching me off the bed. Despite my protests, she continued until she flung me out the front door, across the porch and into the dirt.

All I could do was sit and sob at the corner of the house, my bare skin providing no destination for the tears to flow. Some time later, I heard the door.

Cerys walked out. Without a word, she laid my clothes and water jug before me. She turned back, and the lights in her home flicked off.

I didn't sleep that night. I remembered when I would go to villages, little things about particular girls stuck out to me- their smiles, the shininess of their hair, even their figures. Yet I just... never noticed boys. I had never thought there was anything wrong with me. But the more I pondered, the more I realized. Every single marriage in the Inyan tribe was between a husband and wife. A husband and wife who would become a mother and father.

Maybe that's nature, I thought. There must be something wrong with me. Some unnatural trait, some moral failure.

A moral failure I thought I could correct.

The next several months, I continued as usual. One thing was different. When I found a settlement to sell in, I'd spent the night with any man who would take me. I wanted to prove to the world, to myself, that I could change. Yet every morning I would slip out before dawn, disgusted with myself and physically sick. I regretted these nights so much that the regret began to weigh me down in the form of exhaustion. I would wander just far enough into the desert to get the settlement out of my sight, and have an uneasy, feverish sleep the rest of the day.

I used to look back on these days and think I was stupid. Now I think naive is a better word for it. The first person in years to show me genuine human contact was taken away from me the first night I met her, the same night I was told I was some... freak of nature. I haven't exactly accepted myself, but at least now I know I can't change.

I was naive, but lucky too. Looking back on it, I could have contracted some horrible illness, been abducted and sold off somewhere -probably separated from Crown Jewel-, or had a child. Any one of those things could have been a death sentence to me. I gave up eventually. The nights I would spend alone, just myself and the suffocating silence of the desert at midnight, soon became the nights I preferred. Often, though I'm embarrassed to admit, I would sculpt from stone the form of a woman's body beside me as I slept.

These lonesome nights passed one after the other, blending together as the years passed behind me.


	3. The Last of the Inyan, Part 3

"Man was born of dust, and eventually to dust he shall return."

That was what my father once told me. This is the end of my second day with no water. The vultures descend with each hour. I fear I must finish my note soon, if I want it finished at all.

I guess I'll conclude by telling the immediate events that brought me to this situation.

I'm tired of the desert. Whether I would have become so tired if that terrible night never happened, and I was still a member of the living Inyan tribe, I don't know. I'm tired of being alone, watching society from the outside as I'm doomed to my stone huts and dark, quiet nights.

My prison of silent isolation.

A couple of days ago, I found my way to a village I had visited a handful of times in recent years. It sprung up almost overnight, but it seems permanent. I had just sold a stone flute when I heard in passing about "Great Canyon City." Apparently, it's a city along a massive river and next to what the man called a "dam." It sounded like a city more advanced than any I've visited, entirely modern like the ones in other kingdoms.

I was, of course, troubled by the apparent mistreatment of faunus within the city. If you've read this far, you can probably figure out why I don't exactly agree with the mistreatment of someone for some inborn quality, something they can't change. Plus, I've met a few faunus, and the ratio of decent ones to criminals is the same as humans.

Still, an advanced city with all the food I could ever eat and water I could hope to drink granted a flicker of hope in my heart.

I set off the morning after visiting that village. I had only the roughest idea of where to go, Southeast, somewhat near the ocean. I figured if I found the river, I'd follow it, and I left it up to the whims of chance and luck whether the way I decided to go, either upstream or downstream, got me to my destination.

I never found the river.

My journey was normal for about two days. Wake early, move as far as I could and maybe find water, take shelter during the day's hottest hours, and move again just before dusk. The Sun rose over the crest of a plateau, warming the desert and bathing it in orange hues. Heat waves rippled over the sand, creating the deceptive silvery hues I had grown to hate- a mirage.

Yet something caught my eye. Three pillars of stone and a fourth halfway broken, each at the corner of a stone building. At its center, a dome.

My heart raced as I approached. I needed money if I was to find any form of comfort in Great Canyon City, after all. This half-buried temple could contain gold, jewelry, any number of other things. The stone front parted with a swipe of my hand, and I hopped down to the floor of the temple.

The room was rather small. Much bigger than the shelters I conjured from stone, of course, but I could have sprinted to the other end in a matter of seconds. Sun filtered in from cracks in the ceiling above, the illuminated floor below covered in piles of the sand that trickled down in an irregular stream. The ceiling was held up by ruined pillars, each with a myriad of splits and fissures, enough for me to reconsider my search. I rose some sand from the floor to bandage the pillars, just to be safe.

Once I reached the far end of the room, I could see my eyes reflecting on the mural of smooth stone. It was mostly black and white- obsidian and alabaster, maybe? A colossal black snake with white armor coiled a pile of gold, skulls littering the outside of its lair. Next to the colossal snake, and with one hand on its black side, a woman with pure white skin and hair, eyes the color of blood.

She sent a shiver down my spine.

Below the mural, what looked like a lever. Everything told me to turn back. But that lever invited my hand. I felt as if I was a puppet as I reached out slowly. My fingers clasped the stone, and I pushed forward.

A horrible scraping noise echoed through the chamber as the ground behind me pulled down. With a clunk at each step, chunks of stone settled in at staggered heights, the first stairs in a set too long for me to know, as beyond about six or seven was choking darkness.

A flame danced in the palm of one hand, and I pulled a section of the mural behind me into a stone several inches across. I rolled it down the stairs.

Clunk.

Clunk.

Clunk.

Another horrific sound, the clamor of half a dozen stone spikes protruding from the stair the stone struck in an instant. I swept my hand in front of me as I descended, covering that particular step in several inches of stone. Bones littered the next several steps, adventurers who were apparently not so lucky.

I made it to the bottom of the stairs alive. I stood at the far end of a corridor. Its remarkably smooth floors had cracks at irregular intervals. They looked to be human made, as the straightness of the lines and smoothness of the edges could not have been natural. Yet there was no regularity to them.

Once again, I rolled a stone across the floor. Its knocking on the ground echoed throughout the silent cavern, and I jumped when a blaze of flame suddenly erupted from the crack with a vicious roar.

"_Whatever's in here, someone put it here. That someone __**really**_ _didn't want it found_," I thought. After all, the temple looked to be old. A lot of Vacuo was destroyed during the Great War, but I wouldn't be surprised if these ruins, further into the sea of stone and sand than I had ever been, had survived. They looked to be older, maybe even dating back to the lost kingdoms of long ago. My heart began to race.

My footsteps were the only sound, echoing off the walls and into the abyss of blackness. They picked up pace as I continued on for what felt like an eternity, leaping over the cracks of flame. Bones littered the floor, some charred to near nothingness.

Finally, a golden box, longer and wider than I was tall. It was ornately decorated, jewels and colored stone patterning the front. Behind it, a sarcophagus, the golden shape of a man wearing a jeweled crown. Beside him, another mural. The same woman with alabaster skin and hair, dark red eyes. She looked strangely sad.

I reached to the clasp of the golden chest.

Immediately, from every single crack in the floor behind me, a searing inferno burst forth. I backed into the chest, wide eyes watching the dancing flames. The entire corridor was lit now. It seemed to be about twenty feet wide and half as tall, but hundreds of feet long. The wall next to me began to move.

Then, behind it, a low, guttural grunting.

My breath came uneasily and my heart beat into my throat as my head slowly turned.

Six eyes. One set easily the size of my head, the other two further back, and about half the size. In the second I shrieked, the colossal creature burst from the shadows. Its head was halfway between snake and alligator, covered entirely in white armor and reaching nearly to the ceiling. Its black body, at even intervals shielded by bony, spined armor, dragged behind it.

The chest forgotten, I began to run.

I swept my arms in front of me with each step, parting the flame and sending it behind me to the terrifying beast behind me. Whether my attacks missed, or the monster shrugged them off, I never had the confidence to check.

I heard what sounded like the beast getting violently ill. I looked over my shoulder in time to watch it hurl a glob of viscous black fluid toward me, and I ducked to the side. The attack splattered on the ground, and from it rose a beowolf.

I've hunted enough grimm by now that I eliminated it almost automatically with a stone spike through the gut. I didn't notice the second that had rose from another black puddle just beside me, and barely dodged a swipe in time.

Its claws slashed my jug of water, wrenching it from my side and pulling me backward toward the massive snake-like beast still in pursuit. I have bad luck with water, I guess, because the container shattered across the floor. One hand raised to impale the beowolf with spears of ice, and the other commanded a torrent of fire back to the larger threat.

Once again, I began to run. This time abandoning entirely the Basilisk and the beowolves that threatened to slow me down. Three sounds echoed throughout the corridor in a cacophony: my breath, my sprinting footsteps, and the growls of the grimm behind me. Finally, I reached the staircase. My escape became harder, but the light filtering in from the top gave me the slightest hint of hope amid my terror.

I passed over the stair I covered, and revealed the booby trap that had been laid countless years ago.

I heard the Basilisk shriek as the stone spears launched from their hiding place. The beowolves still snapped at my cloak, but I heard the largest grimm, at least, begin to retreat. As I passed the columns supporting the temple's ground floor, I blew out their bottoms, causing the ceiling to collapse.

I dove out of the doorway I had created just in time. The ground shook as the very last stones tumbled on top of each other, crushing the dozen or so grimm underneath.

I rolled over onto my back, catching my breath. My first thought was that I had taken the mural, with the giant snake grimm and white-skinned woman seriously.

The second thought was that I was entirely without water.

I haven't made it very far. Ten miles, maybe? It all looks the same. Desert sandier, drier, flatter than I've ever seen. Heat haze ripples in every direction as the temperature climbs higher than I've ever known, this Summer has been especially hot.

My throat feels torn and my head is pounding, but writing this as I resigned myself to death made me realize something. I've been alive in this desert for ten years for one reason: I survive. I survived the Inyan massacre, I survived the crushing weight of my own identity, and I survived hordes of grimm. I have to survive now, and however many more times, to avenge the Inyan tribe.

My name is Alexandra Ité.

If this note _is _found in the pocket of a dried-out skeleton, know that skeleton died fighting.


End file.
